(Editor's Note: The following opinion column does not constitute an endorsement of any political party, or candidate, on the part of Newsmax.)
Whether you love or hate Donald Trump, dare to contemplate dire consequences to your life, your children and grandchildren, the nation, and the free world if he loses this presidential election.
Personalities aside, policy and performance differences between the two candidates are stark and seismic.
U.S. Economy Strength
Less than four years ago, by the time former President Trump left office, the stock market, so crucial to workers’ 401(k)s, was stronger than before the COVID outbreak, and by the first quarter of 2021, the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) was as well.
With no thanks to profligate Democrat spending, the more than $36 trillion national debt now greatly exceeds the nation’s entire $29 trillion GDP, up a trillion from just a year ago.
If this continues, according to Congressional Budget Office projections, that public debt owed by you, me and our children will top $50 trillion by 2035, amounting to about 122% of GDP.
Household Living Costs
U.S. inflation has increased household living costs by about 20% since Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took office.
As noted by Wall Street Journal writer Casey Mulligan, much of America’s inflation has resulted by V.P. Harris’ tie-breaking votes advancing two Senate bills, the American Rescue Plan of 2021, and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
Together, those tie-breakers reportedly increased federal spending by more than $3 trillion, translating to at least 6% higher U.S. consumer prices, causing “at least half of the excess inflation (beyond 2% annually) that occurred between 2020 and 2024.”
Reliable, Affordable Energy
President Biden’s first executive actions ended the Keystone XL pipeline while allowing Russia’s Nord Stream 2 connecting Siberian natural gas to Western Europe blocked by President Trump to proceed. At the same time, both he and V.P Harris on multiple occasions have pledged to end fracking.
Such policies suppress energy sources needed to support household and business expenses, fuel industries and transport commodities while spending huge amounts of taxpayer and consumer money on costly and unreliable green wind and solar fantasies along with electric vehicle subsidies that rely upon Chinese and other foreign supply chains for the rare earth battery materials.
This is the same China that is building the equivalent of one coal-fired plant weekly to achieve "net-zero" global greenhouse gas emissions.
Sovereign Border Security
Since President Biden took office, over 10 million illegal migrants have crossed the U.S. southern border. On the day he was inaugurated, he ended wall construction and rescinded 94 executive border security actions from the Trump administration, including the Remain in Mexico policy that was used to process asylum seekers.
Since then, and after putting V.P Harris in charge as “border czar,” the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reports that this illegal invasion has included more than 662,000 individuals who either had a criminal conviction or were awaiting a verdict in a criminal case.
Among known felons are more than 13,000 convicted murderers, more than 15,000 convicted of sexual assault, more than 2,500 convicted of kidnapping, and more than 62,000 convicted of assault.
In addition, the Border Control apprehended 151 migrants on the U.S. terrorism watchlist during fiscal year 2023 alone.
Escalating Crime Trend
Recent findings reported by the National Crime Victimization Survey (NVCS) run by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and administered by the Census Bureau reveal that the violent crime rate in 2023 was 19% higher than in 2019.
That was the last year before the summer of 2020 when many Democratic-controlled cities adopted lax law enforcement policies and a defund-the-police movement swept the country.
During that period, the urban violent crime rate increased by 40%, and excluding simple assault, rose 54% over the period, with an expectation that these higher crime rates "appear to be the new norm in America’s cities."
The urban property crime rate is also getting worse, having risen from 176.1 victimizations per 1,000 households in 2022 to 192.3 in 2023 ... a 26% increase since 2019 excluding rampant shoplifting not covered by the NCVS.
Politicization of Judiciary
Meanwhile, as America’s open southern border has invited cartel sex and narcotics trafficking and lenient courts release criminals without deterrent penalties, we have witnessed blatant Democratic lawfare attempts by prosecutors and courts to bankrupt and jail their presidential opponent while a current president and his family have enjoyed virtual immunity.
Perhaps the most shocking and unambiguous evidence of two-tier justice featured the armed early morning August 2022 FBI raid on former president Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago residence for documents he was authorized by the Presidential Records Act to declassify. Yet those discovered at multiple Biden properties including his unsecured garage with no such legal privilege are somehow no big deal.
The remarkable reasoning not to prosecute Biden was that he was too forgetfully feeble-minded to be held accountable in court, but apparently not so much to impair judgment for presidential reelection at the time.
National Security Leadership
Robert Gates, the former national security director serving eight presidents was right in declaring that Joe Biden has "been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades."
Since then, think catastrophic consequences of the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and weak appeasement policies including the termination of Trump’s oil embargo and failed “Iran Nuclear Deal” that have enabled Tehran to finance proxy wars throughout the Middle East and threaten Israel’s survival.
Don’t expect a Commander in Chief Kamala who bragged about being Biden’s last adviser in the room to be any different or better.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.